We are four humble men who love sports, but hate sports commentary. Peter Gammons is our hero and John Madden is our enemy. If you were to ask us our purpose, our answer would be simple: "We are forever locked in Mortal Kombat for the souls of sports fans everywhere. Statistics are our science and 'the immeasurable character of men' is the obsolete religion of blind faith. Our job is to prove that God doesn't exist and that athletes are merely cold, metal machines with no hearts or souls."

TBO and I have raved about Thigpen since last year. He was on my fantasy team and did well for a few weeks- even helping the ex-Bear Mark Braldey get some fantasy headway. When the Chiefs got Cassel I thought it was dumb because my Chiefs already had a young good QB- Thigpen. Then when news broke that Thigpen- who for some reason was 3rd on the Chiefs depth chart- got traded to Miami, I thought Miami was getting a steal. But then I looked at Thigpen's numbers from last year.

Tyler Thigpen was 27th in passer rating, 24th in YPG, 29th in YPA, and 30th in completion percentage. For some reason after "watching" Thigpen play I thought he was good, but stats don't lie. So TBO told me to look even further, that I should "trust my eye", and that the Chiefs O-line and receivers were awful last year. So I'm going to do that and compare what he did last to what Miami did last year/ have done so far this year to see how Thigpen will fare in Miami; to see if my instinct before looking up his numbers was right, or if the numbers won't lie.

I think one way to help decipher completion percentage is by looking at Thigpen's wide receivers- and look at their catch rate. A quaterback can make good passes to a reciever, but if that receiver messes up/ doesn't catch the ball, the numbers look bad on the quarterback (see: Jay Cutler, game one this year).

Dwayne Bowe was the Chiefs best reciver last year, and he only caught 55% of his passes- that means he only caught a little over half the passes thrown his way. Mark Bradley was Kansas City's 2nd best receiver- and he was garbage. Besides having negative DVOA and DYAR, he only caught 48% of his passes. However, Thigpen did have the benefit of throwing to Tony Gonzalezx last year- and he caught a darn good 62% of his passes. There are some other wideouts that caught a handful of passes but again, with unimpressive catch rates.

But now let's see how the Dolphins receivers did last year. Davone Bess caught 72% of his passes last year, Greg Camarillo caught 66% of his passes, Ted Ginn caught 66% of his, and TE Anthony Fiasano caught 64% of his.

On the face it, it seems the Miami receivers will only help Thigpen's numbers because they seem to have a better ability to catch balls. However, it wouldn't be a good argument if I didn't look at other factors. As Skip Bayless has argued, the Miami system is one of just dink and dumps, which makes for higher comp %. And Chad Pennington has always been an extremely accurate passer. So the high comp % is probably to a combo on Pennington's accuracy and the west coast offense. But won't Tyler also do dink and dumps as well? Now I'm not quite sure how Thigpen's accuracy truly his given his small sample size, but given the offense he will now play in and the recievers he has, his completion percentage should gratly improve.

Now I think it's also fair to look at the team's offensive lines. No matter how accurate you are, if you're getting bombareded and rushed all the time, no way you're going to complete throws.

Last year Miami had the 12th best pass blocking offensive line. Kansas City has the 21st best. Clearly Pennington has much more time to get off his throws, especially compared to Thigpen. However, in three games, Miami has the 25th best. Si Thigpen is absolutely not coming into the same situation as he was before. However, I think Dolphins head coach Tony Sparano has shown to work his way around a poor offensive live. The dink and dumps and the wild cat formation is designed to take advantage of a poor offenisve live. I actually didn't think Miami's O-line was all that good last year, but Sparano designed plays based off of the QB and RB to show a statistical improvement in his offensive line.

What concerns me most about Thigpen is when I look into his game log. TBO said if you discounted his first couple of games, then his numbers improve. However, they actually don't. In 5 out of his last 7 games, Thigpen has a completion percentage under 55% and never boasted a passer rating above 86. Yes, there was a streak between week 5 and 10 where he threw 5 TDs and no INTS, but in the time where he should have improved (weeks 11-17), he threw 10 TDs but 8 INTs.

However, considering their starter is now out for the year, I'd have to think that Thigpen is Miami's best option, and the pick they gave up probably won't be that high considering the Chiefs don't seem to care about Thigpen. So on that front getting Thigpen will probably be worth it. But how well will he play? And to be honest I can't really tell you based on the evidence I've been given. I assume that Thigpen can dink and dump, but will Miami's receivers make Thigpen better, catch more of his passes and thus improve Thigpen's numbers? Or was it that the Chiefs receivers had a low catch rate because Thigpen wasn't that good? I don't know. My first gut reaction, after actually looking at Thigpen's passing numbers is that Miami is getting a subpar QB that has experience. But who's to say that Thigpen won't improve, or even make the Miami receivers better? There's no evidence to say that he can't? But if you twisted my arm and made me say how Thigpen will do, I'll tell you that he'll Kyle Orton-eqsue- at best.

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comments:

now explain to me why joe flacco didnt get benched this year like thigpen. he had a higher completion by 5%, but had same int, less TD, and half as many rushing yards. If thigpen sucked, then so did flacco in my opinion.

Oh, and herm edwards is one of the worst coaches ever. dude had an assistant coach in charge of clock management. How lame is that

Upon a quick glance Flacco's problem was just inconsistency. In four out of Flacco's last six games, he has a QB rating above 95. And done of those games was against Pitt when he threw 2 INT and no TD

7 of Flacco's 12 INT came in in first four games with only one TD. Since then he had 13 TDs v 5 INT

Flacco showed improvement and growth where Thigpen didn't. Plus Baltimore was a top 4 rishing team vs Larry Johnson who sucks

Both essentially had the same O-line last year

According to football sabermetics, Flacco was a far superior QB as well (19th and 22nd vs. Thigpens 29th and 30th in DYAR and DVOA respectively) Although I don't know quiote how thats measured to get the vast disparity.

So why is Flacco a top fiove QB this year? Non idea, I think maybe he's played shitty defenses and also will come back to earth

Last year Flacco had a better QB rating, YPA, and complettion percentage (at least Flacco completed 60% of his passes). Both threw the exact same Y/G

Thigpen also threw in two less games yet both threw the same amount of INTs- although threw four more TDs

Outside of TDs- Thigpen wasn't that good

Again, I would have thought Matt Ryan be the guy to be this good and not Flacco, so why is Flacco so good, I don't know, maybe he's just gotten better and now is making better decisions and throwing the ball in better locations- things stats can't measure- YET

Or maybe Baltimore is 7th best in pass protection giving Flacco more time to make these better decisions

I think a major problem with football sabermetircs is that is can help us chart better to explain what exactly is happening, but doesn't help explain the why quite as well as we'd like to

Also, I don't know where Flacco's nubers are comong from because his best receiver- Derrick Mason is only catching 55% of his passes, Mark Clayton only 47% and Earl Bennett, Johnny Knox, and Devin Hester have all been better recevers this year than any individual Baltimore reciever